Senator COONAN (Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) (4:53 PM)
—Senator Brown, you have mentioned a number of hypotheticals and asked me to give you some view as to whether or not I think that would be a rare circumstance. While the factual situations may be correct—you have in fact said that a couple exist—they are obviously hypothetical. It is important to emphasise that only some environmental measures may constitute a form of expropriation. Most environmental and other regulations are not forms of expropriation—I think that is a fair comment. There would have to be a measure which, for example, effectively took away the ability of a business to continue to function, which would perhaps be a rare circumstance. In the kinds of situations you outlined—and I think I heard accurately each of the five that you mentioned—it is described more as an imposition of additional costs on a company. That would be very unlikely to constitute expropriation but, as I said in an earlier answer, it certainly depends on the case. Insofar as you can have views about hypotheticals, the simple imposition of additional costs on a company would be very unlikely to constitute expropriation. If you entirely shut down an activity and took away the ability of the business to continue to function, that may well be something that might come within the purview of an exceptional circumstance.

On the issue to do with state planning on coastal development, my advice is that that would be very unlikely to constitute expropriation. Indeed, my advice is that all other examples given seem to come within the category of imposing considerable additional costs on firms, but that is within normal police powers of government and not expropriation. It would be difficult to envisage a situation where they would give rise to compensation.